The first website was created in 1991 by Tim Berners-Lee. This started web 1.0, which indicates the status of the World Wide Web. Web 1.0 consisted of mostly static, or non-interactive websites. Users could not correspond with one another; they could not change or add to websites, the web sites were there just for users to look at, merely an information source. Once people started to realize the potential of the internet, the dot-com bubble, or the IT-bubble started to burst. In the late 1990’s, companies found that once they started to use the internet to their advantage, their stocks increased rapidly. Also, people started to see the rise of many new internet based companies. This ushered in the switch from web 1.0 to web 2.0 around 2004. This new version of the World Wide Web, Web 2.0, made the internet interactive and allowed wide spread user participation. It changed the way programmers made the software, and the way in which users utilize the web. “Examples of Web 2.0 include web-based communities, hosted services, web applications, social-networking sites, video-sharing sites, wikis, blogs, mashups, and folksonomies.” Some may argue that the term web 2.0 is not viable and that there was no actual technological update, but either way the internet now is considerably different than the first website in 1991. Instead of web 1.0 which was updated by the provider and released to the user, web 2.0 is a community of internet services which are constantly being updated. Web 2.0 provides a “network as platform” on which users generate content and build on the site, and users can run software through the browser. Most web 2.0 websites allow the user to search the site, provide links to connect meaningful information together, let the user add, remove, or comment on other’s work, categorize the content by using tags to assist the search process (folksonomies,) uses extensions , and signals to notify the creator of changes made. Data in web 2.0 is easier to find and better categorized.
Programmers use languages like JavaScript, Adobe, and Ajax (to name a few) for the client side of the browser. These languages allow the web site to act like a desktop application. Users can download and upload, making the page as interactive as possible. Many of these also come with widgets, re-usable, standard code which can be easily used to make things like clocks and calendars.
As far as actually making the site, the same languages like PHP, ASP, and Python are still used much like they were for web 1.0, except now they generate content in machine readable languages like XML and RSS so that websites can be linked to other web sites.
Once the term web 2.0 became wide spread, many other terms began to appear; business 2.0, library 2.0, law 2.0, Advertising 2.0, Democracy 2.0, government 2.0, education 2.0, and many more.
Not only is the actual web changing, but the way in which we, as users, use it. No longer does one need a computer to check e-mails, make a purchase, pay a bill, or anything else internet related. Cell phones, PDA’s, netbooks, GPS, car radio, and gaming systems (to name a few) are all portals to the web.
Up and coming technology will further these access points to include anything from electronic books, toys, or cigarettes.
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Examples of web 2.0: